Star Trek Discovery 30-second episode 7 Promo: second-by-second.

‘Magic to Make the Sanest Men Go Mad’ has massive aliens, a party, a kiss, glowing purple balls and a lot more. Here’s our breakdown of the new promo clip.

With Discovery now in full flow, what does the new 30-second promo for episode 7 have to tell us about what to expect from this week’s episode. Well, top of the list is the return of Harry Mudd, but what’s he up to and what did you miss in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it montage of action. Well, here’s the trailer.

0:11-0:13 – Discovery shuttle bay. A humanoid in Ant-type helmet with glowing blue eyes and chest plate, behind it what appears to be a much larger alien creature, fires a phaser. This is seen by Burnham, who hides behind control panel. Dialogue (Burnham, off-screen): Intruder alert, shots fired. 0:13-0:14 – Lorca, side view. Dialogue: “I want him locked down.”

0:14-0:15 – Bearded male crew member collapses (possibly Tyler, but probably not). This is seen through the legs of another person in Starfleet uniform. In the background another crew member can be seen either unconscious or dead slumped against a corridor wall.

0:16-0:17 – Stamets, flanked by Tyler and Burnham, standing in what appears to be a lab. Burnham and Tyler have phasers in hand. Stamets turns to camera looking resigned and sad. Tyler shouts “wait”, before there’s a massive explosion and white-out.

0:17-0:18 – White-out fades, to show a shot of Burnham standing in what appears to be Discovery’s mess, but decked out for a party. There are a mix of uniformed and casually dressed partygoers drinking and dancing (she is in uniform). She looks toward Tyler, who is front right of shot – also in uniform but wearing a garland around his neck – chatting to a woman.

0:18 – Party. Tilly, dressed casually for a party, hair down, dances with male partygoer who is drinking a green drink. She laughs and smiles.

0:18- Lorca, looking concerned. Dialogue: “Go! Go! Go!”

0:19 – Burnham runs to evade phaser fire

0:19-0:20 – Close up of arm in grey sleeves holding phaser. We pan across to see that it is pointing at Lorca, in his captain’s chair. He appears to then be shot in the neck as he tries to get up.

– Tyler writhing on the floor either in pain or in an effort to escape some sort of restraint. His upper body glows with purple ‘lightning’.

– In purple light, Tyler moves in to kiss Burnham. He is wearing the garland we noted from the party scene earlier.

– Lorca, angry, runs – seemingly to attack something.

0:24-0:26 – Burnham and Tyler, phasers raised, enter the spore drive lab to find Harry Mudd sitting at the control panel. Costume indicates his may be the arm holding the phaser to Lorca earlier. He is drinking from a gold goblet. Dialogue (Mudd, first off screen – then shown raising goblet): “Make yourself at home, I have”

0:26 – Burnham aims phaser – presumably at Mudd.

Titles… That’s that.

It all looks like it adds up to something along the lines of, maybe, classic Next Generation episode ‘Cause and Effect‘, which sees the crew of the Enterprise caught in a Causality Loop durning which it is destroyed before a resetting to the start of that day. According to Stamets, however, the loop is a lot shorter here. Though it’s still time for a lot of the events here to be negated as events that only happen in specific loops, and therefore will not be remembered going forward. So much of what you see could be taken with a large pinch of salt in terms of the wider story.

Whether or not Stamets’ ability to recognise the loop is linked to his newly acquired spore-wrangling skills remains to be seen.

The return of Harry Mudd certainly looks interesting, and potentially hints that his abandonment by Lorca will be avenged – or, as we have posited before – they may have been more to their meeting than pure chance.